Online video has exploded. But it’s more than just the demand for video. It’s inter­ac­tiv­ity. Videos offer sight and sound, but online they also offer touch since they have con­trols like “play,” “pause,” “fast-​​forward,” etc.

When you com­bine this with my ear­lier state­ment that mul­ti­me­dia engages more senses and there­fore appeals to more peo­ple, video specif­i­cally allows you to deliver your mes­sage in a num­ber of ways that appeal to dif­fer­ent modal­i­ties of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, if not all of them.

“Visual” means that peo­ple learn or com­mu­ni­cate by see­ing. “Aural” means they do so by hear­ing. (It’s often mis­tak­enly referred to as “audi­tory.” Audi­tory means what can be heard and not how one per­ceives by hear­ing.) And “kines­thetic” means peo­ple under­stand bet­ter by “feel­ing” or “doing.”

(In face-​​to-​​face encoun­ters, for exam­ple, sales­peo­ple are often trained to watch out for signs that hint at what the prospect’s pre­ferred mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is. For exam­ple, visu­als will say “I see what you’re say­ing,” aurals will say “I hear you,” and kines­thet­ics will say “I have a grasp on the situation.”)

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There’s an inter­est­ing debate going on in my copy­writ­ing forum, about copy cos­met­ics and specif­i­cally the for­mat­ting of head­lines and subheadlines.

My post here is not to dis­cuss those issues directly. I’ll reserve that for another article.

How­ever, I do want to add my thoughts on one issue that seems to keep com­ing back in the forum — the issue of using long-​​winded, exces­sively wordy head­lines that are preva­lent on web­sites nowadays.

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Copy is all about words. Or is it?

Copy is about using words to describe the ben­e­fits of your offer. About using words to paint vivid men­tal imagery. About using words to stir the senses, press all the “hot but­tons” and push the reader to take some kind of action.

But is it really ALL about words? I mean, just words? No.

Some copy­writ­ers claim that graph­ics, for­mat­ting and pho­tographs should NOT be added to a saleslet­ter because they dis­tract. They can take the reader’s focus away from the message.

I agree. But not entirely. Here’s why…

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